1889 Map Illustrating The Extermination of the American Bison
the Vintage Map Shop, Inc.
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By: W.T. Hornaday
Date of Original: 1889 (published) Washington D.C
Original Size: 23 x 18 inches
This fine reproduction of W.T. Hornaday’s influential map, originally published in the 1889 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, documents the dramatic decline of the American Bison from the early 1700s to the late 19th century.
Once numbering between 30 to 60 million, bison populations fell to fewer than 1,000 by 1889, largely due to overhunting, habitat loss, and aggressive U.S. expansionist policies. The map uses a series of dated boundary lines to show the species' shrinking range—from the eastern woodlands of the Alleghenies in the 1730s to a few isolated pockets on the fringes of the Rocky Mountains by the end of the 19th century.
Hornaday’s map was among the first scientific attempts to visualize the scale of a manmade extinction in progress. The extermination of the bison was not merely an environmental catastrophe but a deliberate effort to subdue Native American populations, for whom the animal was a central source of food, clothing, and cultural identity. The rise of the railroad only hastened the slaughter—passengers were encouraged to shoot bison from moving trains, and between 1872 and 1874, an estimated 5.4 million bison were killed.
Hornaday, a pioneering taxidermist and conservationist, hoped the map would serve as both a warning and a call to action. It helped galvanize early conservation movements and contributed to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the first national park in the world. While initial protections were weak and enforcement slow, the map remains a powerful artifact of ecological loss and an early turning point in the American environmental consciousness. Today, it stands as a stark reminder of how quickly a dominant species can vanish when exploitation outpaces stewardship.
Inventory #12465